Williams v. McGowan’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 1 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Upon this sale Williams suffered a loss upon his original two-thirds of the business, but he made a small gain upon the one-third which he had bought from Reynolds’ executrix; and in his income tax return he entered both as items of ‘ordinary-income,’ and not as transactions in ‘capital assets.’ This the Commissioner disallowed and recomputed the tax accordingly; Williams paid the deficiency and sued to recover it in this action. The only question is whether the business was ‘capital assets’ under § 117(a) (1) of the Internal Revenue Code, 26 U.S.C.A. Int.Rev.Code, § 117(a) (1). * * * “Congress plainly did mean to comminute the elements of a business; plainly it did not regard the whole as ‘capital assets.’ * * * There can of course be no gain or loss in the transfer of cash; and, although Williams does appear to have made a gain of $1072.71 upon the ‘receivables/ the point has not been argued that they are not subject to a depreciation allowance. That we leave open for decision by the district court, if the parties cannot agree. The gain or loss upon every other item should be computed as an item in ordinary income.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 70 F. Supp. 31 - Williams v. McGowan